A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska Read Free Book Online Page A

smile in place, chatted on about nothing. They were the owners of a fabric store called Makedonka. On occasion, our aunt gave us a meter or two of some material or other—I remember one that was a dirty white color, with a brown and orange palm tree in the middle, or maybe two palms: our aunt sewed us skirts with elastic waistbands and a flounce. They didn’t look great on us because of the elastic waistbands. We usually wore them with light brown tank tops that stretched enough so, like all our tops, we could pull them up from our feet.
    From the very beginning, our grandmother did not like our uncle’s choice. For a daughter-in-law she had wanted a nurse, someone hardworking and as cute as pie, with long hair, a fair complexion, smiling, beautiful, and blond. The woman our uncle had selected was the diametric opposite of Grandma’s ideal. Our uncle cried behind the house when our grandmother told him she was not the girl for him, then took off somewhere. Our aunt cried sorrowfully, “My poor little brother. He’s the only one with any education, and now look…” she sobbed, then set off after him. Srebra thought it was funny, but I cut off her laughter with a sharp pinch to the hip. Verče suggested we take a walk through the village. No sooner had we set out than we met Vida, our grandma and grandpa’s neighbor. Granny Vida was most interested in whether our father had settled things with his family. She always asked when we saw her, and Srebra and I always said we didn’t know anything about it, that the topic was not mentioned in front of us. “So what about you? Are you looking for a cure, or do you plan to stay like this?” Granny Vida asked. Srebra and I did not know anything about that either, because Srebra and I didn’t know where to find a cure, and it always seemed to us that our mother and father weren’t looking, and that we’d continue on with conjoined heads to the end of our lives, old maids, scorned by everyone. Perhaps we’d end up like our neighbor Verka. Deep down, our grandma also seemed to think we’d be old maids, because she frequently told us about an old maid in the village. “She gets her paycheck, eats, and drinks; she’s like a buffalo. What does she need a husband for? A wife with a husband doesn’t eat or drink; she just slogs along looking after children, who then bring home lazy, unwashed daughters-in-law.” Another old maid in the village was Slavica, the agent who interrogated our grandfather that winter, though about what no one told us. Thin, tall, bony, with dark skin and hair, a gold tooth, and eyes that blazed with malice and power, she was the queen of Yugoslav Communism in the village, a member of UDBA—the secret police—dressed in a long leather coat. Who made those leather coats the UDBA agents wore? For years, even after the breakup of Yugoslavia, they wore them over their business suits. Every time Slavica showed up at the house,Grandpa, as if on command, threw a heavy wool jacket over his shoulders, and with peasant opanci on his feet, grimy from working in the animal stalls, went off somewhere with the agent. When he returned, he didn’t want to eat dinner or sit with us in the room with the woodstove, but lay down in his room, where he pulled the quilt and heavy woolen blankets over his head and trembled like a branch. Several years later, they found him, beaten, not far from the vineyard. He spent several days in the hospital and then came to Skopje. Srebra and I were alone. We had just returned from a book fair we had gone to with our school and were at Auntie Dobrila’s; she made leather slippers at home on an industrial sewing machine. We sat on the couch and watched her. She was not bothered by our appearance nor was she ashamed of us. She jokingly referred to us as the “ass and underpants” as if we chose to be together all the time rather than being forced to.